Perhaps you've noticed our spiffy little icon on your browser. Perhaps you're using IE and have added a page of ours to your "favorites." (We recommend it. You'll definitely want to come back.) Perhaps you noticed our Mini-Shtick Icon. If not check out some of the images on this page. Doesn't that little icon add character? (It's like doing yard work except without the work and without the yard.) The Favicon should display properly in Netscape 7+ and IE 5+.

     Since we're enjoying our Web Site Icon so much, we thought we'd tell you about it. Also, it was somewhat difficult to find information on the topic. We were sitting around on break complaining to some marketing guys about our Favicon woes, and they said, "Sounds like a target market," so here we are taking advantage of that niche.

     A "Web Site Icon" is also known as a "Favicon" since it is also the icon that shows up (when it exists) next to pages on your "Favorites" list. (If you're using IE.) Really the two are not necessarily the same, but conceptually they represent your site in the same kind of way.

     The process of creating a "Favicon" for your pages is simple. First create and icon with one of the few and difficult to come across icon editors. (We smell a target market, do you?) Name that icon "favicon.ico" and place it in your root directory. IE will look for it and download it whenever someone tries to add your site to their "Favorites" list. (Sounds to us like a way to catch that statistic if one cared for it. How many times was your favicon downloaded?)

     Now your Favicon is showing up in Favorites lists, but what we really want is for the icon to show up next to your URL and on Netscape's tabs. For that we recommend a bit of HTML; the virtually unknown "LINK" tag. We have an example below.

<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" href="/somewhere/favicon.ico">
     Just point that "HREF" at the "Favicon" in your root directory and you're ready to go. (Obviously this would destroy "Favorites" statistics.)

     The nice thing about using this method, is that the "LINK" tag will be the overriding factor in determining what icon shows up in the IE favorites list or in Netscape's tabs, so by using the "LINK" tag, you can have a different favicon for every page, or for different parts of your site.